Pairings: NarutoSai

This is a double first-person point of view story. In other words, some of it is told by Naruto, and some of it is told by Sai.

Naruto

Sai

Also, I should mention here that I think Kakashi is older than Iruka….like ten years older. Or, if he’s not, then I want him to be.

The Us-Them Complex
by jam2599

Iruka was the one who answered the door. He looked a little older, though if I saw him on the street and if I hadn’t already thought about the ten years that I’d lived through since I’d last seen him I wouldn’t have guessed that he was nearing forty.

Fuck, I’m gonna be thirty soon.

He looked from my face to Sai’s quickly before smiling widely and trapping me in a big hug. I patted his back and choked out, “Good morning, Mr. Umino,”.

Iruka laughed and released me. “Don’t you dare call me that, Naruto!” he said, looking uneasily from my face to Sai’s. I realized right then that Iruka probably hadn’t expected Sai to come…I had asked Kakashi, but I judged from Iruka’s reaction that he hadn’t known about it.

“You didn’t even call me that when you were in high school!” Iruka continued. He tried to act like nothing was wrong as he reached across me to shake Sai’s hand again.

“Thank you for having me,” my employer said in a soft voice. Damn, the sound went straight through my ears and into my blood, making my heart beat faster and my throat go dry.

I swallowed as I tried to knock Sai out of my brain.

Iruka laughed again and put his scary smile on. “It’s not a problem,” he said, turning to me with his ‘angry teacher’ grin. I smiled back sheepishly as Iruka turned around and shouted back into his apartment, “Kakashi! Get out here!”

I looked past Iruka to see one of Kakashi’s larger dogs hovering around the front door. He must have been one of the older ones, too, because he didn’t bark or charge at us and instead just sat back on his haunches and gave me the same kind of glare that old dudes give teenagers when they walk around with iPods plugged into their ears.

I stuck my tongue out at him. I think that dog bit me when I was little.

The bedroom door opened and Kakashi walked out wearing the same kind of stuff I’d seem him in when he looked after me in high school: a white tank top and navy sweatpants. Surprisingly enough, he didn’t look a day older to me than he had on the day he’d helped me pack up for college. I guess his silver…okay, gray…hair had always made him look older than he was.

I realized, right then, that my older mentor was probably pushing fifty.

“Kakashi!” Iruka shouted at him. “Put some damn clothes on!”

Kakashi rolled his eyes as he waved at me lazily. “Hey, kiddo,” he said as he pulled a jacket out of his hallway closet. He glanced at Sai but didn’t ask anything.

I caught a curious expression on Sai’s face out of the corner of my eye and he smiled at me before looking at Kakashi again. “Are you the man Naruto was speaking to on the phone?” he asked.

Kakashi nodded as he pulled his jacket on. He shot Sai another glance. “And you are…”

I felt the floor creaking beneath my feet and I turned around to see Sakura and Sasuke, both dressed about as well as Sai, walking up to Iruka’s apartment. My eyes widended and they stopped for a moment when they recognized Sai and I. They looked at each other and Sakura smiled at Sasuke. They didn’t say a word to each other as they joined us.

Then, when Sai turned to see them, Sasuke smirked.

I was suddenly back in high school, that one week where Iruka made my group stay after to work on a project for class. By ‘my group’ I of course mean Sakura and Sasuke.

Iruka hadn’t liked the way we’d worked on projects before then. You see, whenever our group was assigned a project, Sasuke usually did the planning, Sakura did the work, and I went out to get them food, or books, or I held one of their couches or beds to the floor. Iruka figured this out one day when he asked me to present our project and…okay, so I spazzed out and told him how we worked together.

So, basically, Iruka had us sit down after school and do another project. He checked on us constantly to make sure that we each did an equal share of EVERYTHING.

There was one point when Iruka left the room and Sasuke sighed, closing his book as he rubbed his temples. “This sucks,” he’d said.

Sakura shrugged. “If Iruka had told us he wanted everything to be even before, we couldn’ve just DONE it like that. I just wished that he’d warned us, instead of letting us screw up and waste time.”

My problem was that they’d given me a book to read through, and I was supposed to find some information and figure out how, or if, it fit into our project. I didn’t know how to do this, as I’d never done that kind of thing before, but I didn’t want to tell Sakura and Sasuke that.

“Whose turn is it to get food?” Sasuke asked. We looked around at each other and he shut his book and stood up, pushing his chair in with a little too much effort.

“I’m gonna go get something from the corner store. Do either of you want anything?” He asked, looking from Sakura to me and back.

She though for a moment and nodded. “Something sweet, maybe strawberry-flavored,” she said before turning to me and asking, “Naruto?”

I grunted and shifted my sitting position. My damn legs had fallen asleep. “Get me a cup of instant ramen,” I said as I tried to force myself to read again.

Sasuke nodded but paused on his way out to the door. He let out a long breath and touched his forehead.

“I hate this,” he said with more gravity than his previous complaints.

I glared at him. “Well, then why don’t you work with a different group?” I was tired and irritated too, and there was no way that I was going to listen to him bitch.

“No,” Sasuke said. “It’s not our group. We…we had a system. We all did what we knew how to do. Things worked. I mean, our group fit together.”

Sakura smiled a little but didn’t say anything. Sasuke looked at me for a second before leaving.

I looked back down at my book and I realized that I couldn’t do anything for them. I was dead weight…that was what I was good for…nothing.

Iruka looked past me and smiled at Sasuke and Sakura. “Uchiha! Haruno! You came!” he shouted. He took a step back into his apartment and I followed him. Sai came with me wordlessly, which made me nervous.

When Sai doesn’t talk, he THINKS.

Sakura and Sasuke followed us inside, and I think it was right then that the smell of dogs hit me. Iruka’s apartment had smelled like potpourri when I was in high school, but it only figures that ten years of Kakashi’s dogs would ruin that for good. Sai looked around their apartment curiously, and his eyes widened a little when he saw all of the dogs that were sprawled on the floor and couches. His cocky little smile lit up his face and my better judgment told me to cover his mouth, but I don’t usually follow that so Sai just turned to Iruka and said, “Wow, I thought that it was lesbians who were supposed to own dogs.”

Iruka’s face went red (all but for his scar) and he looked around nervously. “Well…uh…”

“Ah, shut up, Sai,” I said under my breath. He nodded like a little child who had just been told to keep their fingers the hell away from the wall outlet before smiling at Iruka.

Sakura took off her jacket and smiled at Iruka. “Good morning, Iruka,” she said, pulling his attention away from the annoying shithead I work for.

He turned to her and smiled. “I’m glad that you and Sasuke came. Do you two need to go back soon…?”

You two?

YOU TWO?

I bit my lip. Shit, they were together.

Sasuke shrugged. “My schedule’s pretty open right now. I’ve made a little me time, and my assistant has the month off anyway, so I’m good.”

I looked at Sakura and hoped that her answer would be vastly different. Nothing like, ‘Oh, Sasuke and I are free…’

She sighed. “I need to get back to the hospital tomorrow. They don’t let us have time off there.”

Iruka turned to me. “I’m not holding you up, am I?”

It almost broke my heart to hear him ask me that. He was my old teacher…and he’d looked after me. I crossed my arms and replied with as much gusto as I could, “Nah, I just work for this asshole right here,” I said, pointing back at Sai, “and I don’t have any problems with making him stay here a while longer.” I turned to Sai and gave him a little glare. “Lazy ass doesn’t even have any work for the next month…”

Sai smiled back at me and kept his mouth shut.

Damn, he’d only said one weird thing so far that morning.

Kakashi interrupted our little conversation circle when he tapped Iruka on the shoulder. “Honey?”

Iruka snapped at him, “Don’t call me that!”

My old mentor shrugged. “I didn’t know that you’d invited Sakura and Sasuke.”

Iruka turned to face him and crossed his arms. “Well, I didn’t know you’d let that other guy come over!”

That other guy? I guessed that it was an accurate description for Sai.

“Well, that aside…” Kakashi said. Iruka stared at him for a moment before Kakashi pointed to their dining room table.

It had room for four.

“Shit,” Iruka said as he hit his forehead. Kakashi nodded, and they stared at the table for a few seconds before Iruka threw his hands up in the air and said, “Let’s go out.” without turning to the rest of us.

“Where?” Kakashi asked.

“I don’t care, out,” Iruka said as he grabbed a jacket. “Is that okay with you kids?” he asked as he pulled it long, looking between his old students and ignoring Sai.

Sasuke nodded and Sakura said, “Sure,” rather quickly. I glanced at Sai and he smiled at me. I took a little breath again and tried to shake myself out of the little stupor that had fallen over me.

“Naruto?” Iruka asked. He was staring at me.

Shit, they’d all been staring at me. I’d hoped that they’d all missed the look I’d given Sai….I’d hoped that he’d missed it too…

It was just a passing thing, anything. A fetish. A weird fetish.

I turned toward Iruka quickly and fished my keys out of my pocket, grinning widely to try to cover whatever it was that had fallen over me. “Let’s go!” I shouted as I pushed my way past Sasuke and Sakura to Iruka’s door.

-------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------

Naruto’s parents drove in front of our little procession. ‘Parents’ probably wasn’t the accurate word for those two, but Naruto has never told me about his family, and I found it odd that he hadn’t insisted that we visit his mother and father while we were in town for his family reunion.

We were in the back car. Naruto drove as usual, but he seemed a little tense. He must have been surprised to see Sakura and Sasuke again that morning. Maybe he wasn’t prepared for it.

His phone rang and he fumbled with it in his pocket for a moment before I reached over, unzipped his jacket pocket, and took it out for him. Naruto froze but didn’t say anything, so I opened his phone and checked who was calling. The cell phone said, ‘UNKNOWN’ so I answered it before Naruto could protest.

“Hello, Uzumaki Naruto speaking,” I said. Naruto shot me a cute little glare and I smiled back.

“What--” It was Sasuke. “This isn’t Naruto!” There was a moment of silence. I could tell that Naruto had heard his old friends voice when he glanced at his phone uneasily. Sasuke came back on and laughed a little. “Sai, is this you?”

The laugh didn’t sound quite natural. It seemed that the act of answering Naruto’s phone had gotten to him.

“Yes, it certainly is,” I replied, my voice much calmer than Sasuke’s. “Sorry, I just didn’t know if, ‘Naruto’s boss speaking’ was really appropriate,” I answered.

When we reached a stoplight, Naruto stared at me but made no attempt to take the phone from me.

“Hey, Naruto, can you hear me?” Sasuke asked in a much louder voice than before. I pulled the phone away from my ear and made a face.

“Yeah, can you hear me?” my driver asked, turning to the phone. Traffic started to move again and he pulled his blue eyes back to the road.

“Yeah,” Sasuke shouted back. I held the phone up between Naruto and myself. Sasuke continued with his intended message. “Iruka called me, and he doesn’t know where to go but the traffic’s too bad to pull over and talk. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Um…” Naruto started to look around and I watched the road for him. He was always a little reckless, in a good way, I think.

“Shit,” Naruto said more quietly so that only I could hear him. “I don’t know anything around here.”

“What?” Sasuke asked on the other end.

Naruto glanced at his phone in my hand, a little nervous because Sasuke had heard him. “Uh, it was nothing. Just talking to Sai.”

Sasuke went silent.

There was a shuffling noise on the other end, and Sakura was on. “Naruto, come on, what do you want already?” she asked in a loud voice.

Naruto made a face at his phone. “Why are you asking me?”

“Well, because no one else knows what they want.”

He grimaced. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said under his breath.

“What was that, Naruto?” Sakura asked.

I chuckled a little when Naruto flushed red and hit himself in the forehead. “Nothing, just talking to Sai!”

“Well, uh, talk a little more quietly.” She hung up without receiving any information.

Naruto covered half of his face with this hand in his embarrassment and slumped his shoulders forward. It was rather obvious that this was causing him a great amount of stress.

I watched Naruto for another minute and he glanced at me, surprised that I was looking at him.

“Calm down,” I said. He sighed and watched the road again. “Is it that hard, seeing them again?”

“Well, how would you feel if you saw your old friends again?” Naruto asked.

My old friends? I wondered if he meant the kids from my private school in London, or the guys I slept with in acting school. If I saw any of them, I think I would just smile and look away.

“Who knows,” I said.

He eyed me for a moment, and I couldn’t read the look on his face.

-------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------

I ended up following Sasuke’s car into the parking lot of a French restaurant. It was after noon by then, and I wasn’t in the mood for breakfast anymore. The place we went to didn’t look like the kind of place Iruka or Kakashi would have gone to, but given present company…

Well, I just hoped that it was Sasuke and Sakura they were trying to impress, and not Sai.

When we were seated, I looked around the restaurant for familiar faces. I’d already had enough of a surprise that morning when I found out that Sakura and Sasuke were coming to eat out with me, Iruka, Kakashi and you-know-who. I didn’t want Ino or Kiba or anyone else to come out of nowhere and bite me in the ass.

Sai put his hand on my arm while I was looking around. “Are you alright?” he asked me in his annoying, soft voice. Fuck, he looked good. “You seem tense.”

I shook his hand off and took a deep breath. “It’s alright,” I answered.

When I looked up, I saw Sasuke look away from Sai’s hand.

I knew, okay, that it bothered Sasuke to learn that I was working for another actor, and that I’d started to work for Sai a little while after I quit working for him. I get that that would bother him.

I didn’t want Sasuke to think that I was GAY, though. Hell, he’d already been hurt at the reunion when he learned that I was hiding something about my life from him. I was afraid that he’d start jumping to conclusions or that he’d end up pulling me to the side later and asking WHAT ELSE I was hiding from him.

And I wasn’t with Sai anyway.

Sakura seemed to take the former ‘surprise’ rather well and she didn’t act like she had any doubt about my sexuality, which made me feel a little more comfortable being around her than being around Sasuke.

“So, Naruto,” Kakashi said, making me snap out of my internal grumbling, “do you have a girl these days?”

I made a face. Damn it, I didn’t want everyone to know how long it had been since I got laid! “Um, no,” was all that I could say. “Too busy with work. My boss likes to see me suffer and he enjoys knowing that he’s the reason for my lack of a social life.”

“I do take you to parties, though,” Sai said. I glared at him and he sipped his glass of water.

“It doesn’t count when all the guys are gay and when all the girls who talk to me just want to get your cell phone number,” I muttered.

The ‘g’ word made Sasuke sit up in his seat. Fuck, he DID think I was gay!

“I haven’t dated in forever either,” Sakura confessed. My angel! Sweet, sweet Sakura! “I’m just so busy at the hospital that I don’t have time to look for decent guys.” She laughed and glanced at Sasuke. “And considering who I grew up with, my standards are just so high that it’s really hard for me to find guys who I think are attractive enough to date.”

Wait...

What did she say…

She hasn’t dated…

In forever…

I sank back in my chair. Oh, thank God, she wasn’t with Sasuke!

“Well, thank you, Sakura,” Sasuke said with a stupid smug smile. Hah! He WAS a fag, through and through! Good old Sasuke! “To tell the truth, I haven’t dated since acting school either.”

“Oh,” Sai said. “Since acting school?” He leaned forward and rested his chin on his hand, an obvious sign that he wanted to hear more about what Sasuke did in acting school.

I didn’t care! Hell, when you’re young you think you’re SUPPOSED to do it every night…I sure did! And I wouldn’t tell Sasuke about the girls I slept with!

Sasuke looked a little flustered. “Well, you know, my standards have gone up too.”

Sai nodded and sat back.

The next thing I knew, they were both looking at me.

Shit! We were talking about me, weren’t we? “Uh…” I said. “Well, my standards haven’t changed….”

…said the guy who jacked off while thinking about his male boss.

Fuck.

“I’m older too, now,” I said, turning back to Kakashi. The attention was making me a little panicky. “I feel older. You know how it is.”

Kakashi glanced at Iruka. “The hell I do.”

Too much information! Too much information!

Iruka kicked him under the table and flushed red. “You pervert,” he hissed. It was at that point in time when a few people sitting at the nearby tables chose to turn around and give us bad looks.

I picked up a menu and buried my face in it.

I wished right then that I had thought of some excuse for not having a girlfriend. She was busy? She was in America? She’d cheated on me? I was going to become a monk?

With Sai around, I couldn’t think properly.

I lowered my menu and looked around the table. Everyone else had started to look at their menus, too. I glanced at Sai and he didn’t look up.

I wondered what he meant about acting school. Thinking back on my time with Sai, I couldn’t remember seeing him with anyone. He never brought anyone home, at least not on the nights that he had me stay late or overnight with him, and he almost always kept me with him at parties.

Had he…not scored in just as long a time as I had?

It wasn’t like he had a lack of potential bed partners. I don’t know Sai’s ‘type’, or anything, and I think I’d feel grossed out if I did, but I was sure that there was someone, some guy out there, who fit it who’d gladly sleep with him, maybe even eat breakfast or do date-type stuff.

Maybe he wasn’t interested in sex. Sai’s favorite thing in the world seemed to be bothering me, and now I knew that I potential second-most-favorite thing was fashion. Figures, the queer.

I guessed that that must have been it. He just didn’t enjoy sex.

Shit, I’d had my eyes on him for five minutes when the waiter came up. I hope that Sasuke didn’t see and think that I was…

Oh, hell, I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore.

“Sai,” Iruka said. I flinched. Sai? Why was he talking to Sai?

My boss looked up at him as our waiter walked away. “Yes, Iruka?”

Iruka smiled a little. I knew that smile…it was his ‘I’m going to get this out of you and kill you with it’ smile. It really worked best on flustered, spastic students who’d just repainted all of the school statues to look like Teletubbies. “How’s Naruto been treating you?”

I cringed. God damn it, why did Iruka have to give him the opportunity to SAY something? The bastard’s greatest joy in life was fucking with my head!  “Honestly,” Sai said in the most serious voice I’d heard him use since he offered to keep the hell away from me at the party the night before, “I couldn’t have asked for a better assistant. Even when he argues with me or yells at me, I can hear the kind concern in his voice that sometimes makes me think that the more appropriate title for someone doing his work would be, ‘nanny of an overpaid child’ than ‘personal assistant’.”

I gave him a look but he ignored me and kept on going.

“Naruto spends most of his waking hours looking after me, and I can’t say that I don’t like the attention. He doesn’t enjoy giving it, but he still does, even after five years, and he hasn’t quit yet. Now, my last assistant got on my nerves. He always agreed with me and let me have my way, which was not in good judgment. It turned out that he was enamored with me, though, and must say that between working with someone who’s ready to do whatever you want and someone who will forcefully hold you to the ground to keep you from doing things with terrible consequences even though they know you enjoy it that I most certainly prefer someone of Naruto’s breed.”

My vision went red and I found myself standing in the public phone cubicle of the restaurant twenty seconds later, not sure of how I got there but with a hunch that I’d knocked down a chair on my way over. I was ready to hyperventilate.

Fuck that, I was ready to kill the bastard and I was glad that I had stormed off instead of throwing something at his stupid grinning face.

I sat down in the little seat of the cubicle when Sakura walked over, concern written all over her face. I held my head in my hands and she knelt in front of me, putting one hand on my shoulder and the other on my other arm. She didn’t say anything for a minute, giving me a chance to have the first word.

I chose well.

“Fuck…” I whispered. I didn’t want to get thrown out of the restaurant, though I’d probably already given the staff enough reason to get rid of me.

“He always does this,” I said after a few seconds, looking at Sakura directly. She patted my back and waited for me to calm down.

“Sai’s a dickhead,” she said after a minute. I looked up, a little surprised at her language, and she shrugged. “But you chose to work for him, right?”

My heart sank. “Yeah, but I didn’t choose HIM.” I lowered my head in shame. He was my boss, after all.

Sakura gave me a concerned look. “Is he always like this?”

“Well, not always,” I admitted. “But I want him to act like a normal person when I’m with you and Sasuke.” Oh, poor Sasuke. “I think he’s already gotten Sasuke into thinking that we’re together, too.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why would Sasuke think that? I mean, I didn’t…”

I sat back in the little booth. “I don’t know, Sasuke’s just been acting weird. And Sai keeps saying stuff…I mean, come on, he said that I held him to the ground.”

Sakura laughed. “Well, you didn’t actually, did you?”

“Um…” I closed my eyes as I reflected. “I think I did it twice in the last three days.”

“Oh,” Sakura said as her smile faded. She studied me for a moment. “But that doesn’t mean that you two are doing anything.”

I rolled my eyes. “I know, but Sasuke…he’s gotten sensitive. And he’s still mad that he didn’t know I was Sai’s personal assistant.”

“Why didn’t you tell him?” she asked. “I didn’t care too much, but I wasn’t around when you worked for Sasuke, so fill me in if there’s some reason…”

I shrugged. “I don’t think it’s about REASON, Sakura.”

She gave me a look. “Okay, so you think that Sasuke’s just jealous because you work for Sai and not him.”

“…please don’t tell me that you think he’s jealous for another reason.” I did NOT want to hear any theories about Sasuke wanting to do me. Not then.

“Maybe you’re just imagining all of this. Okay, tell me something, since you don’t seem to be happy seeing us again. What do you want to do right now?”

I was about to protest when she said that I wasn’t happy seeing them. It was Sai’s fault, damnit! But when she asked me what I wanted to do, I scared myself a little with the answer.

“I just want to go back to Tokyo, crawl under my bed and pretend that I never embarrassed myself in front of you and Sasuke,” I said.

Sakura pushed me to the side of the seat and sat next to me. She wrapped her arms around me too quickly for me to push her away, and I DID want to push her away because I felt so…awful. I didn’t feel like I deserved to be near her and Sasuke, not when I was such a disappointment. I felt embarrassed letting Iruka and Kakashi see that this was what my life had become…this wasn’t the stuff I’d wanted them to see! They were supposed to say, ‘Hey, Naruto, you look good for twenty-eight’ and take me to do stuff like old times, not hear about how terrible my life had become!

“I hate everything that’s happened,” I said. My voice started to crack and Sakura held me tighter.

“What happened?” she asked me.

-------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------

College, freshman year. I suddenly had no Sakura or Sasuke to help me pass time, to give me things to laugh about, to pull me out of my shell. It was hard, having to live with a new roommate, to go to class with people who didn’t care if I was there or not, who wouldn’t have noticed if I was gone, or if I failed, and who didn’t think that the stupid stuff I did was funny.

I didn’t have Sasuke’s fat wallet to bail me out anymore, either, so I got a part-time job at the local ramen stand, Ichiraku Ramen. I just made some money to supplement the stuff I got from student loans, and to help buy clothes. My looks had always been important, or at least since the days of going to the mall with Sakura and Sasuke, when they’d buy me clothes that a state-raised orphan kid couldn’t afford.

The first time that I went to the mall with them, I just hung out and didn’t look at anything. They took me to one more store when they were done clothes-shopping (I did not know Sasuke was gay…how?) with no explanation.

Sasuke and I talked near the men’s dressing rooms until Sakura came back with a bunch of clothes and practically threw them at me. When I gave her a weird look, she glanced at Sasuke and he shoved me into a dressing room. To make a short story even shorter, I found out that I was kind of good-looking that day. Nothing to get excited about, I guess, but I always liked shopping with them after that.

I felt better when I was wearing the stuff she picked out for me, when I was wearing the stuff he’d paid for.

So I got a job at the ramen stand and tried to shop on my own. When I tried to make new friends to fill up the rest of my spare time, the other students usually told me that I was too immature or not serious enough for them, and I got the cold shoulder for my enthusiasm and energy.

I spent a lot of nights reading books or delivering ramen. It was…terrible.

I’d lost the only good things about myself, and I didn’t know what to do anymore besides finishing up with my degree and hoping that life after graduation would be different.

I knew that I’d changed the night that I delivered ramen to some rich kid living in an apartment twenty minutes (by bike) from the stand and he short-changed me. When I counted the money, I just looked and him for a moment and he smiled. His friends, who were sitting at a table in his living room, called him back and he waved me off like nothing had happened.

I left without saying anything, walking my bike back to the stand to drop off something I’d borrowed from old man Ichiraku. Ten minutes into it, the rich kid, who was about the same age as me, ran up to me and stopped when he’d caught up with me, panting. He was the glasses type, and he looked like a real nerd wearing a baggy black sweater and dark jeans. He was even wearing house slippers…he looked kind of crazy, too.

Four-eyes looked up at me and brushed some black hair out of his face. The first thing he said was, “So, you didn’t count the bills I gave you?”

I gripped the handlebars of my bike harder. Fucking creep, he’d short-changed me and now he was mocking me! “I counted them, all right,” I growled as I glared at him.

He smiled and dug some money out of his pocket. I looked like enough to cover the rest of bill. The guy just waited and looked at me.

I rolled my eyes and took the money out of his hand, counting it before I put it into my pocket for old man Ichiraku. “What the fuck is this?” I asked him, realizing that he’d given me enough right then to pay for everything he’d bought.

“The money I gave you before was meant to be a tip,” he said, the smile gone from his face. I opened my mouth to say something but nothing came out. “I forgot to get the tip for you before, so when I went back to get it I accidentally left the rest of the money in my bedroom and I only realized it a few minutes ago.” Four-eyes looked at me for a moment before worrying his eyebrows. “You didn’t think that I was going to pay for all of it?”

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “Look, this late at night, people tend to do stuff like that and I didn’t want to get into an argument with a rude rich guy, just to have him laugh at me and shut the door in my face.”

Neither of us said anything for a minute. The ground was wet and I knew that the old rainwater was probably seeping into his slippers, but he didn’t seem to mind as he stared at me.

“So…why didn’t you think I was going to pay? Why didn’t you…ask?” he asked me in a more sober voice than before, hushed and worried.

“I…because I didn’t…”

Four-eyes took a step back, out of my personal space, and sighed. “You decided to hate me from the beginning?”

That word struck me and I realized it was true. I had decided, even before I saw him, that any guy who would call for an Ichiraku delivery for five people in the dead of the night, from a place so far away from the stand, must have been a jackass who just wanted to make their delivery boy run around. Was that…me? When had that happened? That wasn’t me!

I stared at him, and he waited for an answer.

Did I…hate him? Because his life looked better than mine? Because he had an apartment on the good side of town, and friends who stayed up late with him? Because he had money to give me a decent tip?

As I opened my mouth to answer him, three guys came around the corner. They were the kind of guys that scared me in high school, the type that tried to hang around Shino to get in on whatever business his family was up to, guys who wanted and wanted but didn’t seem to care about to much. Big guys, I should add.

I kept my eyes off of them to not draw attention to myself and Four-eyes just continued to look at me, waiting for an answer. The guys who came around the corner looked us over. I could tell that what they saw was my crappy bike and Four-eyes’s expensive-looking clothes and his soon-to-be-ruined slippers.

I knew that unless those guys were in a hurry to get somewhere, that that guy was fucked.

One of the guys nodded at the others and they hung out at a wall while he walked up to Four-eyes. “Hey, what’s a guy like you doing this late at night?” he asked Four-eyes. “And in such nice shoes.”

“Just having a chat,” he said with no fear or emotion in his voice. He was still looking at me, but how could he have expected me to answer him when we were both probably about to me mugged?

“What are you two talking about?” the thug asked him, reaching out an arm to touch his shoulder.

Four-eyes ignored him and took a step closer to me. “Did you?”

I glanced at the thug, who was reaching into his jacket. I hoped that he had a knife, and not a gun. Guns are much easier to kill with than knives, and it’s easy to lose your head when you have the power of a gun. Knives take more effort.

The other two thugs left their place on the wall and walked over to us. I had a bike, so I could have escaped decently even if they had guns (I was in hella shape in those days) but Four-eyes didn’t even seem to be thinking about getting away.

In fact, when he realized that the three guys weren’t going to leave us alone he turned around and said to the first one, “Would you three mind going somewhere else? I don’t have my wallet on me and it seems that that’s what you’re after. I don’t wear jewelry either, so you can’t pawn anything you take from me and I doubt that any of you would look good in my sweater.”

The thug looked stunned for a minute before he laughed. His friends grinned at Four-eyes and one of them said, “What the hell? Telling us to go away like the street is yours. Someone should cut that ugly tongue out of your head, Four-eyes.”

“It’s not ugly, it’s well-conditioned for the stage,” he said, turning back to me.

That just made the thugs burst out laughing. “Well-conditioned, he says?” the third thug roared. “What ELSE is it good for?”

Four-eyes ignored them. “Are you going to answer me?” he asked me. I glared back at him and threw glances at the three gentlemen currently entertaining us with their company. “I’m going to follow you until you explain to me why you felt that way.”

“Dude,” I hissed at him, “what…the fuck…is your problem?”

He narrowed his eyes. “I’d ask what yours is, but it seems to be me, so could you please explain to me just why that is? I really, sincerely want to know.”

My heart stopped when one of the thugs pulled out a knife and put his arm around Four-eyes’s shoulder, holding the blade near his chest but not quite at his neck. My stalker looked at it for a moment before turning to the man who was hanging on him. “Put that away,” he said in a cold voice.

The thug retracted his arm and punched Four-eyes in the face with his other hand. He fell hard to the ground. It was pretty obvious that he wasn’t a fighter at all, or even athletic. Four-eyes turned around after a moment and looked back at me, of all people, wiping blood from his face.

I think that was what did it. The guy wasn’t worried about getting cut-up, or punched, or maybe even killed. What mattered the most to him was being able to hear my answer.

I felt guilty, because of the way I’d acted, because of what I’d said, because of what I thought, so instead of trying to talk to him, instead of trying to ignore the other guys, I thought, ‘Hell, let me make it up to you’.

I told you what club I was in back in high school, didn’t I?

I dropped my bike and pulled off my rainy, slippery biking gloves before burying my fist into the knife-wielder’s stomach. I took the knife when his arm went limp and I threw it across the street with the hopes that I wouldn’t accidentally kill someone else nearby. Luckily, the street was empty and the knife landed with a clang on a drain. I pulled him over my shoulder and threw him onto his back on the ground, knocking the wind out of him and possibly cracking his skull. Either way, he didn’t get back up.

I motioned for his friends to come over and they looked at each other before shaking their heads. I grabbed Four-eyes by the arm, picked up my bike, and stalked away from the street with no plans or directions in my mind.

When we’d walked away a distance, I let Four-eyes go and I leaned against the wall of a building that was closed for the night. I nearly punched him myself when I realized that he was smiling at me.

My fist hurt. “What the hell are you smiling for?” I spat at him.

“You were wonderful,” he answered. He pulled his glasses off his face and wiped them off with a cloth he pulled out of his pocket before putting them back and smiling at me again. “Just like…I’ve seen in movies, when the hero comes in to save the day.”

“Fuck you,” I said, walking back to Ichiraku. I wasn’t going to listen to some idiot trivialize the fact that I may have very well saved his life.

“What?” he asked me in a more sober voice, following me. “Why would you say that? I just called you a hero. That really was fantastic.”

“Did you hire those guys or something?” I asked, quickening my pace. He caught up. I glanced at him quickly; his once-pinkish slippers had turned mud brown, and he had rather long legs. I cursed my shortness to hell.

“Why would you ask that?” Four-eyes asked me. “Once again, you’re accusing me of doing something to you.”

I rolled my eyes. It was true, but…! “Well, you seemed to enjoy it,” I answered.

Four-eyes touched the side of his face. “It hurts…” he said as he walked right up along side me, on the other side of my bike. “Will I have a bruise in the morning?”

He ended up following me to Ichiraku. I was hungry by then, a product of the anxiety he’d caused me, so I ordered some ramen. The old man gave me a look and glanced at Four-eyes. “You hungry, or did you come here to sit?” he asked.

I knew he’d already ordered stuff, and it was at his apartment with all of his good-looking friends, but when I opened my mouth to tell old man Ichiraku Four-eyes said, “I’ll take whatever you recommend. I’m new to ramen, so please be gentle with me.” He put his hands together and bowed.

Ichiraku rolled his eyes and said something about a ‘no-shoes no-service’ policy before turning around and starting on our orders.

We talked for a while, though I was still feeling guilty and just not happy with my self, in general, which made me a little short with Four-eyes. We told each other our names, though I forgot his by the next day (it was long and boring) and talked about the schools we were going to.

At one point, I asked him, “Why haven’t you gone back home?”

He smiled at me. “You didn’t answer my question yet, remember?”

“I don’t feel comfortable talking about that kind of stuff,” I said. “I just…sorry, okay? Things have been kind of rough for me, and it’s…hard to trust people.”

“I know about that,” he said. “I may not have shared your life experiences, but…there really isn’t anyone in the world I can trust.”

“What about your friends?” I asked him before slurping some ramen.

He looked a little sad then and shrugged. “I’m going to know them for a few years, Naruto, and then we’ll part ways. I don’t really like them anyway. I like you a lot more.”

I nearly spat out the noodles I was eating. He was a theater fag! “No offense, buddy,” I said to him, moving my leg a little further away from his, “but this train only stops at certain stations, you know?”

Four-eyes laughed at me. “I…like you in a lot of ways. I really do.”

I gave him a look. “Cut it out already.”

“You’re wonderful!”

“Shut up, Four-eyes!”

He turned serious again. “I wish that…my friends were more like you. I had a friend like you once, a real friend, but now I only know boys from my school, or people that my father introduces me too.”

“My friends…” I started. Thinking about Sakura, preparing for medical school, or Sasuke, in acting school in another part of the country, made me frown. “I don’t really have friends anymore. I don’t like being like this.”

“Are you lonely?” he asked me.

I don’t remember what my answer was that time. We left without exchanging phone numbers or promising to talk again, though, from the look in his eyes, I think that he would have liked that a lot.

I couldn’t see why, though. I was a crappy guy, still am.

-------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------

I really didn’t know what to tell Sakura.

“I just…felt crappy without you and Sasuke,” I said. “I don’t like who I am anymore. It’s hard, letting you two see me like this, but I still wanted to see both of you so badly.”

I felt tears coming; they hadn’t formed yet, but that terrible, stressful feeling, the feeling of being overwhelmed, had caught up with me.

“We wanted to see you too,” she said quietly. “I wish we could all stay here together again. I’ve missed you and Sasuke…so much…”

As I fought back my own tears, Sakura started to cry on my shoulder. Fuck, that surprised me about as much as anything else that night.

“Sasuke…Sasuke and I talked in the car earlier,” she said, “and he said he feels the same way. We don’t care about much. He’s been lonely without you and me, and I’ve missed both of you. You wouldn’t believe how many nights I’ve spent thinking about our high school days.” She dried her face but it seemed like she couldn’t quite look up at me. I could only stare at her in shock.

Maybe…I wasn’t the only one who was having a hard time.

Sakura hugged me a little tighter. “I love both of you so much…”